Chapter I: Part 1

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

In the plain text version words in Italics are denoted by _underscores_ and text in bold like =this=.

In the text the author uses the word "flaunt" in this sentence:

_And these maxims are not merely empty phrases, for in the novel
the politicians who flaunt them fail._

Based on the context it is believed that the correct word should be "flout".

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

* * * * *

THE POLITICAL NOVEL

DOUBLEDAY SHORT STUDIES IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

_Consulting Editor_
Richard C. Snyder
Associate Professor of Politics, Princeton University

=The Revolution in American Foreign Policy,
1945-1954=

By William G. Carleton, Professor of Political
Science and Head Professor of the Social
Sciences, University of Florida

=Political Community at the International Level:
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By Karl W. Deutsch, Professor of History and
Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of
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=France: Keystone of Western Defense=

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=The Role of the Military in American Foreign
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=The American Vice-Presidency: New Look=

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=Contemporary International Law: A Balance
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By Quincy Wright, Professor of International
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By Thomas R. Adam, Professor of Political
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=Law as a Political Instrument=

By Victor G. Rosenblum, Assistant Professor
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=The Fate of the French Non-Communist Left=

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=The Political Process: Executive Bureau--Congressional
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By J. Leiper Freeman, Assistant Professor and
Research Associate, Graduate School of Education,
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=German Political Theory, 1870 to the Present=

By Otto Butz, Assistant Professor of Political
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=The Political Novel=

By Joseph L. Blotner, Instructor in English,
University of Idaho

_Studies in Scope and Methods_

=The Study of Public Administration=

By Dwight Waldo, Professor of Political
Science, University of California, Berkeley

=The Study of Political Theory=

By Thomas P. Jenkin, Associate Professor and
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University of California, Los Angeles

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Doubleday Short Studies in Political Science

THE POLITICAL NOVEL

BY JOSEPH L. BLOTNER

_University of Idaho_

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
Garden City, N.Y.
1955

COPYRIGHT ©, 1955, BY DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

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Editor’s Foreword

From time to time in the Doubleday Short Studies in Political Science series, guest analysts from outside the formal boundaries of the discipline will be invited to help fill certain gaps in existing materials. In the present instance a young professional student of literature, Dr. Joseph Blotner, has contributed a much-needed and highly useful introduction to the political novel. Thanks largely to the care and skill with which this analysis has been prepared, students of English and political science, as well as general readers, should find new and stimulating pathways open to them.

So far as the editor and author know, this is the first essay of its kind in the English language. The fact is worth noting because, despite the large number of political novels in all languages and despite the obvious importance of this particular species of the novel generally, scholars in the field of literature have not devoted systematic attention to it. Until Dr. Blotner decided to undertake a full-scale investigation of the political novel--of which the present essay is one of the beginning steps--the teacher of political science could search the modern language journals and literary periodicals in vain for help in canvassing the possibly valuable contributions of the novelist in describing and explaining political behavior.

_The Political Novel_ is to be welcomed on still other grounds. It is interdisciplinary in scope and intent and it demonstrates anew the fruitful results which can be achieved when a scholar merges his technical competence in one branch of learning with his informed and enthusiastic interest in another. Moreover, crude and scattered though the bridges between pairs of the social sciences (e.g., political psychology) are, the bridges between the social sciences and the humanities are even more so. Collaboration--in this case between literature and political science--should certainly take more than one form, but whatever the form, the great need is to light up the shadowy twilight zones which lie between major disciplines. Not only are these unexplored areas of subject matter to be charted, there are common purposes and joint efforts to be considered. Among others, Dr. Blotner has raised the question: what can the experts in literature and in politics give to each other?

The analysis of the political novel set forth in these pages makes a variety of contributions to learning. Novels can be read two ways: for pleasure and for profit. The latter object--as in all academic subjects--is sometimes pursued under conditions which deny the former. Nonetheless, the reader is reminded by Dr. Blotner that to be alerted beforehand to the nature and significance of this type of novel is to combine pleasure with an awareness that the content may be very revealing of data concerning political life. Thus the words of a writer are at once pleasure-giving and instructive--_if_ the reader is looking out for the proper clues. Second, there is made available an original classification of political novels and politically relevant summaries to serve as a guide to political scientists. The bibliography, though selected, is especially useful in this respect. Third, the headings and substance of Chapters Two to Six actually provide a set of analytical functions which the author believes the novel may serve in illuminating major aspects of politics and government. This study is so cast that the transition from thinking about novels to thinking about politics is painless and without distortion. No one having any familiarity with the traditional categories of political science will find Dr. Blotner’s own presentation strange or unsophisticated.

In addition, this essay represents an attempt to establish durable intellectual bases for probing the nature of the political novel. The tentative definitions and criteria of identification, classification of functions, and annotations are a substantial move in this direction. Finally, among the data revealed in the contents of political novels is evidence of the way a given society reacts to its own political institutions and practices. To the extent that such novels partially yet accurately reflect social reality, the student of politics can draw valid inferences concerning the political beliefs--including beliefs about the nature of politics--held by a sizeable portion of the society’s membership at any one time. One can detect at least the broad outlines of periodic shifts in the political concerns of a people or any segment thereof in their literature.

Chapter One discusses some problems arising from a study of the political novel. This is an important chapter and contains some homely wisdom on the different approaches respectively of the novelist and the political scientist. It should be stressed that certain crucial points with respect to the analysis of human behavior in general can be raised by comparing the techniques of the two kinds of observers and reporters. The well-known remark about pictures being worth thousands of words has occasionally been transposed to the effect that one good story is worth a whole (and dry) textbook. This, of course, is an attractive argument. But it does raise the fundamental question of what analytical operations are performed by the novelist on the one hand and the political scientist on the other. Offhand it would seem as though there were important differences carrying beyond those of purposes discussed by the author. Generally speaking, the novelist is primarily concerned with a coherent story, with a whole fabric of description, and with specific details while the political scientist is concerned with events, processes, and factors, with abstractions from wholes and with classes of general phenomena. The latter builds upon numerous instances, upon gross data, and upon repeated patterns of behavior. The former builds upon an amassing of individualized data fashioned into a unique chronicle. The one gains richness and sacrifices capacity to generalize, the other sacrifices detail for broad generalization. For the novelist, Uncle Tom becomes a microcosm, a device for revealing the tragedy of the whole Negro race in America through a portrait of a single character. For the political scientist, Uncle Tom is lost in what can be said of the entire group of which he is a member. Both are limited and both pay a price accordingly. Clearly more is involved in the different analytic techniques but it suffices to indicate one type of issue raised in this study of the political novel.

Other issues are equally noteworthy. The main character in a novel may be likened to a dummy--or a model--created by the author for the purposes of expressing the author’s observations and, in effect, for “playing out” his ideas. Though the character is pure fiction--i.e., any similarities to known real persons are coincidental--an effective novel must have believable characters, recognizable through behavior traits identified by readers from their own everyday experience. So too the social scientist uses models--analytic dummies--to further his purposes. Dissecting the anatomy of a political model and putting its characters under close examination can teach something about the most fruitful relationships between real persons and fictional characters for purposes of describing and explaining behavior. Often the fact that the novelist is actually building models is obscured by the amount of detail he pours into his molds which then makes his models seem remarkably lifelike. While the models of the social scientist are usually much further removed from correspondence to real persons, the properties built into them must be “believable” too.

Another area of inquiry can be opened up if one accepts the cues offered by Dr. Blotner’s selections and analyses. Political novels seem to reflect mostly the seamy side of political life, emphasizing conflict as the sole theme meriting attention. Through their characters, authors seem to place great blame for social ills on political institutions as detached from other institutions or on individual devils. Is this a reliable and full revelation of politics? As a matter of fact, novels too seem caught in two opposite kinds of explanations: the great man and the great historical force. Each has significant limitations and accompanying fallacies yet each assumes great plausibility at the hands of a skillful storyteller. Inevitably the novelist dramatizes, and in real life the political actor dramatizes too. Unfortunately, the tendency to dramatize reinforces the neglect of the mundane factors which often influence crucial political action and choice.

This line of thought suggests certain concrete exercises which might be profitable for the student of politics to undertake. Since the search for fruitful hypotheses is a backbone of any systematic discipline, it might be useful to search these novels to see if any have been missed. A corollary effort would be to check the knowledge of politics exhibited in political novels against the latest agreements among political scientists. Still another effort might be directed toward a content analysis (in the technical sense) of the novel as medium of communication in order to throw light on the value structure of the society or individuals which are depicted. Finally, what aspects of politics have been ignored by novelists and why? For example, a novel might be an excellent way to illuminate the world of the decision-maker, the governor, the leader. Thus far, none has really done so.

Dr. Blotner is to be congratulated for aiding an important cause: the use of novels as a teaching device in political science courses. Those who have tried have been rewarded but have lacked an introductory essay and bibliographical guidance. Novels make points which can be made in no other way and in interesting fashion. The student’s idea of the political realm and of approaches to its understanding will be enlarged by following the thoughtful guide presented below.

One considerable merit of this monograph is a lighter style than is normally characteristic of political science literature. Nonetheless, its intellectual quality will make the reader anticipate Dr. Blotner’s larger study.

RICHARD C. SNYDER

Contents

Editor’s Foreword v

Chapter One. THE STUDY OF THE POLITICAL NOVEL 1

The Importance of the Political Novel 1
The Nature of the Political Novel: Problems of Definition and
Selection 1
Characteristics of the Political Novel 3
The Novelist and the Political Scientist 4
The Purposes of This Study 8

Chapter Two. THE NOVEL AS POLITICAL INSTRUMENT 10

THE UNITED STATES 10
Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Civil War 10
Albion Tourgée: The Blunders of Reconstruction 11
Perennial Theme: Corruption 12
_Upton Sinclair: Corruption Plus Radicalism_ 12
Growing Political Consciousness: 1930 to 1954 13
_John Steinbeck: The Party Organizer_ 14
_Sinclair Lewis: Native Fascism_ 14
_John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway: Liberal Causes
Abroad_ 15
_George Weller: International Communism_ 16
_Norman Mailer: The Extreme Left_ 17
_Novels of the Cold War_ 17

GREAT BRITAIN 19
Benjamin Disraeli: Revitalized Toryism 19
Henry James: The Breakup of Victorian Tranquillity 20
Joseph Conrad: Early Cloak and Dagger 21
E. M. Forster: The Problem of Imperialism 22
Aldous Huxley and George Orwell: The Future in Perspective 23

THE CONTINENT 23
Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Nihilism and Its
Rejection 23
André Malraux: Pro-Communism 24
Ignazio Silone: Disillusionment on the Left 25
Arthur Koestler: The Bolshevik on Trial 26

AFRICA 26
Alan Paton: The Race Question 27

Chapter Three. THE NOVELIST AS POLITICAL HISTORIAN 28

GREAT BRITAIN 29
George Eliot: The Early Nineteenth Century in the Midlands 30
Benjamin Disraeli and Anthony Trollope: Whigs v. Tories 30
George Meredith: The Early Radical 31
Mrs. Humphrey Ward: Victorian Portraits 31
H. G. Wells: England in Transition 32
Howard Spring: Labour and the Course of Empire 32
Joyce Cary: The Edwardian Age and After 33

THE UNITED STATES 33
Edgar Lee Masters: Expansion and Conflict 34
Albion Tourgeé: Slavery and Emancipation 34
John W. De Forest: Post-War Corruption 35
Hamlin Garland: Enter the Farmer 36
Winston Churchill and David Phillips: Bosses and Lobbies 36
Jack London: Marxism v. Fascism, Early Phase 37
James L. Ford, Samuel H. Adams, and Upton Sinclair: Oil Men
and Anarchists 38
John Dos Passos and James T. Farrell: Communist Infiltration 39
Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos: Global War and Politics 40
Post-War Directions 40

THE CONTINENT AND ELSEWHERE 42
Joseph Conrad: Colonial Politics and Revolution 42
The Soviet State: Its Roots and Growth 43
Marie-Henri Beyle [Stendhal]: Napoleonic Panorama 44
André Malraux: Comintern v. Kuomintang 44
Jean-Paul Sartre: The Shadow of Munich 45
Fascism through Italian Eyes 45
Alan Paton: The Trek of the Boers 46
Richard Kaufmann: The Third Reich 47

Chapter Four. THE NOVEL AS MIRROR OF NATIONAL CHARACTER 48

GREAT BRITAIN: A SELF-PORTRAIT 48
Peaceful Change in the Political Realm 48
The Fruits of Imperialism 50

THE UNITED STATES: A SELF-PORTRAIT 51
Forces of Corruption 52
The American Idealist 53
Responsibility at Home and Abroad 53

ITALY: A SELF-PORTRAIT 55

SPAIN: AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT 57

GREECE: AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT 58

FRANCE: A COMPOSITE PORTRAIT 58

RUSSIA: A COMPOSITE PORTRAIT 59

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA: A SELF-PORTRAIT 61

GERMANY: A SELF-PORTRAIT 61

Chapter Five. THE NOVELIST AS ANALYST OF GROUP POLITICAL
BEHAVIOR 63

ECONOMIC GROUPS 63
The _Lumpenproletariat_ 63
Peasants 64
Labor 65
Proletarians 68
The Middle Class 68
The Rich and Well Born 69

POLITICAL GROUPS 72
Office Holders: Rules and Skills 73
The Mechanics of Control 75
International Communism 76
Analysis of Mass Phenomena 78

Chapter Six. THE NOVELIST AS ANALYST OF INDIVIDUAL
POLITICAL BEHAVIOR 79

Motivation 79
Moral Problems and Changing Values 81
The Successful Politician 82
Political Pathology: Deviates, Martyrs, and Authoritarians 84
Men Behind the Scenes 88
The Disillusioned 88
The Role of Woman 91

Chapter Seven. SOME CONCLUSIONS 93

Bibliography 96

chapter one
The Study of the Political Novel

=The Importance of the Political Novel=

In an age in which progressively more men have engaged in politics while the politics themselves have become increasingly complex, any means for understanding these interrelated phenomena becomes correspondingly more valuable. The techniques of science are constantly being brought to bear upon this problem of understanding. But one of the best means of enlightenment has been available for more than a hundred years. Since its beginning the political novel has fulfilled the ancient function of art. It has described and interpreted human experience, selectively taking the facts of existence and imposing order and form upon them in an aesthetic pattern to make them meaningful. The political novel is important to the student of literature as one aspect of the art of fiction, just as is the psychological novel or the economic novel. But it is important in a larger context, too. The reader who wants a vivid record of past events, an insight into the nature of political beings, or a prediction of what lies ahead can find it in the political novel. As an art form and an analytical instrument, the political novel, now as ever before, offers the reader a means for understanding important aspects of the complex society in which he lives, as well as a record of how it evolved.

=The Nature of the Political Novel: Problems of Definition and Selection=

The political novel is hard to define. To confine it to activity in the houses of Congress or Parliament is to look at the top floor of the political structure and to ignore the main floor and basement which support it. One has to follow the novelist’s characters, on the stump and into committee rooms--sometimes even farther. But the line is drawn where the political element is forced into the background by the sociological or economic. The political milieu develops in part out of the conditions described in Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_ and John Steinbeck’s _The Grapes of Wrath_. Although these books are proletarian novels, to include them would be to open the door to a flood of books that would spread far beyond the space limitations of this study. Of course, proletarian novels which are also political novels are included. Two such books are André Malraux’s _Man’s Fate_ and Steinbeck’s _In Dubious Battle_. But for the purposes of this study, a cast of characters drawn from the proletariat is not enough, even if they are oppressed economically and socially. They must carry out political acts or move in a political environment. Also excluded are novels such as Herman Melville’s _Mardi_ which treat politics allegorically or symbolically. Here a political novel is taken to mean a book which directly describes, interprets, or analyzes political phenomena.

Our prime material is the politician at work: legislating, campaigning, mending political fences, building his career. Also relevant are the people who influence him: his parents, his wife, his mistress, the girl who jilted him, the lobbyist who courted his favor. The primary criterion for admission of a novel to this group was the portrayal of political acts, so many of them that they formed the novel’s main theme or, in some cases, a major theme. These acts are not always obvious ones like legislating. In Joseph Conrad’s _Nostromo_ a mine owner contributes financial support to political movements which will provide a more favorable climate for his business. _In Dubious Battle_ presents labor organizers who manipulate a strike to serve the political ends of the Communist Party. The terminology of the theater can be helpful in bridging the gap between the world of actual events and the world of fiction. It helps to show how various aspects of the actual political process are translated into the forms of fiction. The author may concentrate his attention upon the actors--the public officials who make decisions and wield authority on behalf of the community or the whole society. A good many of the actors may not be public officials, but rather private citizens whose acts are political: voicing opinions, helping to select candidates, voting, attempting to influence the political process, revolting. These actors, and those who are public officials, may demonstrate factors in the overall drama which are predominantly political in their consequences: attitudes, social power, social stratification. The novelist will be concerned with the roles the actors play and the lines they speak, the purposes they have and the strategies they employ. He may concentrate upon the interaction between these actors or between them and the audience--the public. An author may choose to emphasize the drama as a whole rather than the individual actors, highlighting the stage upon which it is played out--the country or area of national life in which the scenes are laid. This emphasis upon the drama will throw into sharp relief the events and decisions in which the actors participate, and the framework of rules or custom against which they take place.

The novels considered here deal with political activity at all levels--local, state, national, and international. If, as von Clausewitz said, “War is merely the continuation of Politics by other means,” one may find politics in war, too. This study, therefore, includes works on revolutionary as well as parliamentary politics. On the international level especially one encounters group attitudes which are politically relevant. The groups may be the conventional social, economic, or political strata of British and American society, or they may be those of the rigid Marxist state. Other relevant attitudes spring from national characteristics, and many political novels identify some of them. This definition is wide and inclusive, but so is political activity.

The primary sources of this study are eighty-one political novels. Over half of them are by Americans. The next largest group is the work of English writers. Other novels are taken from Italian, French, German, Russian, and South African literature. These eighty-one novels are the minimum necessary to give an understanding of the political novel. At the same time, this is the maximum number that could be included in the study. Only in the case of the English and American political novel has an attempt been made to trace the development of literary genre. Some of these novels are used because they show artistic excellence, others because they show how the form developed historically. More American than English novels are used because they are more readily available, many of them in inexpensive, paper-bound editions. It was not possible to attempt the same outline with the other literatures because of the brevity of this study. For some of them, too, a sufficiently representative group of political novels was not available.

Most often the authors deal with their own countries, although they sometimes write about a foreign land. Some of them are hard to pigeonhole: Henry James, an American expatriate writing about London terrorists in _The Princess Casamassima_; Joseph Conrad, an Anglicized Pole analyzing Russian revolutionaries in _Under Western Eyes_; Arthur Koestler, an Austrian-educated Hungarian living in France, describing the Moscow trials in _Darkness at Noon_. This is one reason why it is more fruitful for present purposes to avoid strict concentration on national literatures and to accept valid insights into national characteristics and behavior patterns no matter what the language of their source.

=Characteristics of the Political Novel=

In _The Charterhouse of Parma_ the witty and urbane Stendhal says, “Politics in a work of literature are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one’s attention.” His own work contradicts the great French novelist, yet his comment is perfectly accurate for many other novelists. Politics in some modern novels of political corruption, such as Charles F. Coe’s _Ashes_, do seem loud and vulgar, and in books like Upton Sinclair’s the reader may hear not one pistol shot but a cannonade. But this is not to say that the use of political material must disrupt a work of literature. The trick, of course, is all in knowing how. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an artistically weak, politically successful work in _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, while Fyodor Dostoyevsky produced a politically unsuccessful, artistically enduring classic in _The Possessed_.

The quality of these novels varies widely, just as would that of a group dealing with religion, sex, or any other complex, controversial theme. In general, the European novels considered here attain a higher level than the American books. This is partly because only the better European novels are treated. But they are also superior to the best American works, except for a few comparatively recent ones, because of the wider variety of political experience presented, the greater concern with ideology and theory, and the deeper insight into individual motivation and behavior. This in turn is probably due to several factors. From the time when the United States attained its independence until the end of the first quarter of this century, it possessed a relatively stable set of doctrines and frames of reference (compared to those existing in Europe) within which the individual led his political life. Although American parties rose and declined, although the Union was preserved, its borders expanded, and international responsibility accepted, this evolution was orderly and limited compared to that which occurred in Europe. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights provided a stable yet sufficiently flexible political framework. Europe during the same period reverberated with the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the unification of Germany and Italy, and the Russian Revolution. These were violent changes not only in theory but in the actual form of government. It is not unnatural then that American political novels range over a relatively narrower area, with their main emphasis on local or national subjects, while those of European authors delineate changing, conflicting, and radically different ideologies and resultant events. It is only since the 1930s, with the increase in centralized government, the impact of international Communism, and the recent appearance on both the Right and the Left of what seem to be threats to traditional American freedoms, that the American political novel has begun to approach the European in breadth of theme, concern with political theory, and interpretation of varying political behavior patterns.

The larger number of bad novels in the American group is also due to the fact that more American novels are treated. Because of their greater availability both for research and teaching, it is possible to show the evolution of this genre in the United States. In doing this one is able to examine the good ones, old and new, such as Henry Adams’ _Democracy_, John Dos Passos’ _District of Columbia_ trilogy, and Irwin Shaw’s _The Troubled Air_. One pays, however, by suffering through period pieces such as F. Marion Crawford’s _An American Politician_. Less obtuse politically but nearly as abysmal artistically, is Paul Leicester Ford’s _The Honorable Peter Stirling_. One is compensated, however, not only by the view of a developing genre, but also by the recording of significant periods in American national life and of the people who helped shape it, as in the Dos Passos work, and by the sensitive and penetrating analysis of central problems in contemporary life, as in Shaw’s novel.

The English political novel is also uneven. That its depths are not so low as those in the American novel is due in part to the political heritage which its authors share with their colleagues on the continent. Its authors work from a long and rich political history in which the evolution has been less violent but no less steady.

=The Novelist and the Political Scientist=

The differences between the methods of the political novelist and the political scientist are worth studying. Their intentions are often at variance. Whereas the scientist is dedicated to objectivity and statistical accuracy, the novelist is often consciously subjective; if his work is intended as a political instrument, as were _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ and _The Possessed_, scrupulous attention to the claims of the other side will invariably lessen the emotional impact and political worth of the novel. If a scholar sets out to examine the rise of Nazism, he will have to treat not only the Beer Hall Putsch and the Reichstag fire, but German history and the German national character as well. He will chronicle the effects of Versailles, the staggering of the Weimar Republic, and the growing strength of the Brown Shirts. He will be concerned with national attitudes, with the relative strength of the parties that vied with the National Socialists. His study will gauge the effects of the aging Hindenburg and the demoniac Hitler on a people smarting from defeat, searching for a scapegoat, and longing for a resurgence. And all this will be backed with statistics where possible. It will be a cogently reasoned analysis with documented references to available sources. Also, the study will be aimed at a fairly homogeneous and well-defined audience. The appeal will be intellectual. If emotion creeps in, the work is probably bad.

The novelist who is to examine these same events will present them quite differently, even apart from the techniques of fiction. If he is a rather dispassionate chronicler of human foibles and frailties such as, say, Somerset Maugham, he will probably portray a group of people through whose actions the rise and significance of Nazism will become meaningful. The reader will probably observe the drifting war veteran, the hard-pressed workman, the anxious demagogue. Out of these lives and their interactions will emerge an objective study of the sources of a political movement and of the shape it took. If the novelist is an enthusiastic Nazi, the book will reflect his particular bias. The storm troopers will become heroic Horst Wessels, the young women stalwart Valkyries, the Führer an inspired prophet and leader. Out of the novel will come a plea for understanding or a justification of violence and a perverted view of German national destiny. The book will be emotionally charged, a calculated effort to produce a specific desired response. If this series of historical events is used by a Frenchman, they will undergo another change. There will probably be an evocation of the Junker mentality, of Prussian militarism, of hordes of gray-green figures under coal-scuttle helmets. If this novel is not a call to arms, it will be a warning cry to signal a growing danger. These three fictional books will use the same staples of the novelist’s art, yet each will differ from the others in motivation and attitude. They will portray aspects of the same complex of events treated by the political scientist, but this will be virtually their only similarity.

A disadvantage for the novelist is his need to make his book appealing enough to sell and to make his reader want to buy his next novel. Although the scientist too must make his work as polished and interesting as he can, the novelist does not, like him, find his readers among subscribers to the learned journals. He cannot rely upon sales prompted by the need to keep abreast of research in a specialized field. If a novelist is to stay in print, political savoir-faire and intellectual capacity are not enough. He has to sell copies. Perhaps this is one reason why all but a few of these novels have a love story accompanying the political theme. Sometimes the love story inundates it, as in _An American Politician_; in other novels, such as Sinclair’s _Presidential Agent_, it is peripheral and pieced out with flirtations. It may be that these novelists include this element because love is as much a part of life as politics. Its nearly universal presence is a reminder, however, of one aspect of the novelist’s task and one way in which his work differs considerably from that of the political scientist.

The advantages of the novelist’s method over the political scientist’s compensate for the drawbacks. These advantages do not necessarily produce a better work, one which gives more insight into a problem or explains it better. They do, however, offer more latitude and fewer restrictions. The novelist may use all the techniques of the political scientist. Sinclair’s Boston is studded with as many references to actual events, people, and documents as most scientific studies, although it is permeated by a violent partisanship which would make a scholarly study highly suspect. But this points up one of the novelist’s advantages: he can use the methods of scholarship to document his case and then supplement them with heroes and villains who add an emotional appeal to the intellectual one. This string to the novelist’s bow is a strong one. He can create a character like Shaw’s Clement Archer in _The Troubled Air_, while the scientist is forced to use opinion research, carefully documented sources, and well-verified trends in treating the problem of deprivation of livelihood as a penalty for suspected political unreliability. Sometimes the scientist uses case histories, but the subjects are often identified by initials and treated with such antiseptic objectivity that almost no emotional impact comes through. The loss of Clement Archer’s job, because he has employed actors blacklisted for suspected Communist activity by a newsletter acting as a self-appointed judge, presents this general problem with more frightening immediacy and reader-involvement than an excellent scholarly study could ever do. Archer becomes one embodiment of the problem--a rather naïve but courageous liberal made into a sacrificial goat because of his fight for what he believes to be traditional and critical American rights. If he wants to, the novelist can use historical personages to flesh out his story. Although the reader does not see him in its pages, Dos Passos’ _The Grand Design_ uses the figure of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the background as one of the mainsprings of the action. An individual may appear in transparent fictional guise. The _roman à clef_ has many representatives in the political novel. Pyotr Verhovensky in Dostoyevsky’s _The Possessed_ has been identified as the revolutionary Sergei Nechaev. Hamer Shawcross in Howard Spring’s _Fame Is the Spur_ is thought to be Ramsay MacDonald. The governor-dictators who rampage through Dos Passos’ _Number One_, Adria Langley’s _A Lion Is in the Streets_, and Robert Penn Warren’s _All the King’s Men_ look and act much like Huey Long. The novelist ranges backward into time as does the scientist. Maugham’s _Then and Now_ brings to life the wily Niccolo Machiavelli, and Samuel Shellabarger’s _Prince of Foxes_ reexamines the sinister Cesare Borgia. When the novelist goes forward into time he need not be confined to a mathematical extrapolation of birth rates, trade balances, or electoral trends. Instead, he can create, whole and entire, the world which he thinks will grow out of the one in which he lives or which he sees emerging. The scientist may attempt to define the group mind or examine pressures toward enforced conformity in political thought. But George Orwell in _1984_ creates his own terrifying vision of the world thirty years from now. And this story is frighteningly believable. It does not even require Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith.” With its three super states perpetually at war, its Newspeak vocabulary including “thoughtcrime” and “doublethink,” its omnipresent Big Brother, 1984 reflects aspects of our world out of which the novelist’s vision grew. Besides the political apparatus which Orwell builds, he creates a protagonist, Winston Smith, one man out of all the masses of Party members and Proles who revolts against the system, providing the reader with a focus for personal association. The reader follows him through his round of duties in the Ministry of Truth, into his state-forbidden love affair, and finally down into the depths of the Ministry of Love where he is tortured into conformity before he will be “vaporized” and poured into the stratosphere as gas. If he likes, the author can move at will seven centuries into the future, where Aldous Huxley erected his _Brave New World_. From a world of mechanization, deteriorating family ties, and ascendant pragmatic science, he can artistically extrapolate a planet ruled cooperatively by ten World Controllers. Embryos are conditioned within their glass flasks and then decanted into a rigidly stratified society where stability has outlawed change and Ford has replaced God. And there are memorable people--sensuous Lenina Crowne, and the Savage, a “natural man” who commits suicide rather than choose between prehistoric primitivism and soulless modernism.

Not only does the novelist have complete freedom in time and space, he has the right to use any of the devices found attractive in communication since the first articulate primate squatting in the firelight gave his interpretation of experience to his hairy brothers. The point of the story can be driven home or made more palatable with laughter, suspense, or a cops-and-robbers chase that will make it memorable. Ernest Hemingway’s Spanish guerrillas and Ignazio Silone’s Italian peasants are often amusing. The reader may remember the inspired profanity or the droll proverbs; he will also remember the fight against Fascism and oppression. From _Darkness at Noon_ the reader will take with him Rubashov’s midnight arrest, the wait for the NKVD bullet in the back of the neck; he will retain, too, the irony of the disillusioned Bolshevik destroyed by the monster he helped create.

This attempt to differentiate the novelist’s approach from the scientist’s is not meant to prove that the novelist’s is better. It is simply different, representing another aspect of the difference between science and art. Each discipline tries to describe and interpret experience. Where one does it by means of well-defined, rigidly controlled techniques within generally accepted boundaries, the other is highly flexible, embodying a view of life shaped by an individual set of preferences and dislikes, talents and blind spots. Each of these divergent methods offers advantages and disadvantages. One should not go to political novels expecting to find, except in rare cases, complete objectivity, solidly documented references, and exhaustive expositions of political theory. He should not always anticipate credibility. When problems are presented, the reader may not find answers or even indications of the directions in which they may be found. But one cannot go to a scientific monograph with the hope of meeting in its pages someone whose life is an embodiment of a problem, or whose survival represents the gaining of a goal, his death the losing of it.

These two approaches to the study of politics complement each other, just as the physician and clergyman both mean to keep their identical patient and parishioner well and whole. The novelist can, however, enter well into the scientist’s field. When he deals with actual events, he tries to record them as they happened. If the names and places are changed, he is usually faithful to the manner or meaning of the events. In _Bricks Without Straw_ Albion W. Tourgée assures the reader that these events or others exactly like them took place during the Reconstruction era in the South, and there is no reason to doubt him. Sinclair’s _Oil!_ exhaustively treats the Sacco-Vanzetti case; it is completely opinionated, but it is a historical account, nonetheless, of one of the most memorable political cases in American history. More than a historian, the political novelist is also an analyst. He sees cause-effect relationships at work, he looks into stimulus and response, motivation and satisfaction. Stendhal is not content merely to describe military and political events during the Napoleonic era; he goes beneath the surface to explain what some of them meant.

=The Purposes of This Study=

This examination of the political novel will go beyond simply charting its development. In order to examine it as a distinct literary form, it will be necessary to discuss its practitioners, the literary techniques they use, the purposes they aim at, and their success in achieving them. More than this, there will be attention to the function of these political novels, at the time they were written and now in our time. In the forefront will be an attempt to show what the reader can learn, whether he approaches this body of work from a particular discipline such as political science or literature, or whether he goes to it as a general reader wanting either enlightenment or entertainment.

The purposes and scope of each chapter indicate the purposes of the study as a whole. Chapter Two, “The Novel as Political Instrument,” examines the effect of the political novel on politics. Some novels contain heroes presented against a political background which might just as well have been mercantile or medical; other novels are intended to have politics as their subject; still other novels are meant to have definite political consequences. This chapter is chiefly concerned with novels of this last type. But it is necessary to look at others, too, for in creating life in his novel the artist will often reflect his own preferences, and they may affect those of his reader. Chapter Three, “The Novelist as Political Historian,” describes the way in which the writer may weave into his story the threads of history, recording not only the lives of his creations, but actual events in the lives of nations. By virtue of his special skills, he can recreate these events with a vividness found in few scholarly histories. Chapter Four, “The Novel as Mirror of National Character,” is devoted to an examination of the cultural and national differences discernible in these novels. There appear to be some denominators of political behavior which remain common no matter what the scene of action. This chapter deals with the numerators, the quantities which vary from culture to culture. Chapter Five, “The Novelist as Analyst of Group Political Behavior,” demonstrates the insight the novel can give into political actions which derive from group attitudes, pressures, and responses rather than individual ones. The novelist may use several indices to determine how a society is structured, which of its groups is most homogeneous, which most apparent in the effect it has upon the body politic. Chapter Six, “The Novelist as Analyst of Individual Political Behavior,” shows how the basic unit in all political equations is treated. The novelist portrays the person who moves in the main stream of politics and the one who stands on its edges. In most cases the acts of these people are examined--their motives, their effects. As in any other kind of fiction, characters are created who are complete individuals, believable and unique. But sometimes they are also typical of a number of people. Chapter Seven, “Some Conclusions,” emphasizes the major points made in the study. It also discusses what may be expected of the political novel in the future. The annotated bibliography gives the author, title, and date for each novel.

In terms of organization, this study proceeds from the most direct relationship between the novel and politics to the least direct relationship. Chapter Two shows how this art form can actually influence the political process. Chapter Six, on the other hand, indicates the way in which the novel treats the individual, who, with the exception of the outstanding leader, has far less direct influence upon politics than groups or nations. Chapter Three deals with the way in which the novel has recorded some major events in the political scientist’s field from the early nineteenth century to the present. Chapters Four through Six proceed from larger to smaller political units.

In short, the aims of this study are to indicate the gradual development of the political novel in England and the United States, to show what it has produced in several other countries, and to demonstrate the insights it can give in this area of human behavior to students of literature, politics, and related disciplines, and to the general reader.

chapter two
The Novel as Political Instrument

A political novel written from a point of view favoring a particular faction is a political instrument in effect even if not in intent. A writer may sternly tell himself at the outset that he will be completely impartial, only to have the reviewers note all sorts of bias, real or imagined, of which he may not have been conscious. This happened to Turgenev when he published _Fathers and Sons_, and it continues to happen every year. The intensity of the authors’ feelings varies from obsessive preoccupation to passing interest. The novels in this chapter were included because they contain definite opinions, sometimes appeals, on political subjects. Some of them never exhort the reader or seem to lead him by the hand to the author’s point of view. But each of them contains material capable of influencing the reader’s opinions about some phase of political activity. If a novelist gains a reader’s support for a cause, arouses his distaste for a course of action, or simply produces a reevaluation of previously accepted beliefs, his work has served as a political instrument just as surely as a pamphlet mailed by a national committee or a handbill stuffed into the mailboxes of a sleeping city.

THE UNITED STATES

=Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Civil War=

_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ is a prime example of the novel as political instrument both in intent and effect. Harriet Beecher Stowe declared in her preface that

The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for
the African race, as they exist among us; to show their wrongs
and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as
to defeat and do away with the good effects of all that can be
attempted for them....

The book did more than awaken sympathy; its millions of copies helped rouse the growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North, creating in part the political climate out of which the Civil War grew and mustering moral support for its prosecution. But the novel’s effects were not confined to America. In _Literary History of the United States_ Dixon Wecter called it “the most influential novel in all history,” and Harold Blodgett noted that it was used in the campaign that secured England’s Reform Act of 1867. Raymond Weaver, in his introduction to the Modern Library edition, notes that half a million Englishwomen signed an address of thanks to the author, and that Russians were said to have emancipated their serfs after reading the book. The hero of Edgar Lee Masters’ _Children of the Market Place_ says the book “was not really true,” but he records the praise it won from Macaulay, Longfellow, George Sand, and Heine, and adds, “The winds of destiny previously let loose were blowing madly now.”

Translated into nineteen languages, the novel was also dramatized. Eliza’s flight across the ice and Simon Legree’s cruelty have become hackneyed, but the author did not rely exclusively on such melodrama and tugging at the heartstrings. The plot is interlarded with case histories of slavery--mothers whose children were taken from them, women sold for “breeders,” men taken from their families and sent down into the deep South. The reader may feel that Legree is a villain so fiendish as to be unbelievable; he may find the angelic Little Eva’s death scene, in which she cuts off golden curls and distributes them to the sobbing family and retainers, cloying or emetic. There are other characters, though, worth observing. Senator Bird of Ohio, who had formerly supported the Fugitive Slave Act, shelters Eliza before sending her to a Kentuckian who had freed his slaves and now runs a stop on the Underground Railway. Artistically the novel is very bad. Its structure sprawls, its melodrama creaks, and its sentiment oozes over hundreds of pages peopled more often by cardboard figures than believable human beings. This is another case, however, in which the reading public paid no attention to critical standards. Mrs. Stowe concluded her novel with the warning that

not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the
ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall
bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

Her words were prophetic, and her book helped to bring about the dies irae of which she spoke.

=Albion Tourgée: The Blunders of Reconstruction=

Just as the political novel helped to prepare the way for the Civil War, so it commented upon the events which followed it. In _A Fool’s Errand_ (1879) and _Bricks Without Straw_ (1880), two awkward but intensely felt books, Albion Tourgée criticized the tremendous blunders of the federal government in the Reconstruction era. Using the same techniques of case history, pathos, and melodrama as did Mrs. Stowe, Tourgée applauds the intent of the federal Reconstruction program but is outraged and cynical at the way it was carried out. He praises the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau but laments its dissolution and the government’s virtual abandonment of the Negro. Like Mrs. Stowe, Tourgée states the problem as dramatically and appealingly as he can; then he offers his solution: education. Both of Tourgée’s novels close with appeals for federal aid to education in the South. The Negro is obviously in greatest need, but the aid is meant to be spread over the entire educational system. Discarding all pretense at fiction and writing directly to the reader, Tourgée concludes _A Fool’s Errand_ by telling him that “Poor-Whites, Freedmen, Ku-Klux and Bulldozers are all alike the harvest of ignorance. The Nation can not afford to grow such a crop.”

=Perennial Theme: Corruption=

In the 1880s the American political novel began to shift from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the theme of corruption. This subject was explored extensively during the next five decades. Whether the scene was the national capitol, as in Henry Adams’ _Democracy_ (1880), or a ward in New York City, as in James L. Ford’s _Hot Corn Ike_ (1923), the theme was the same--the betrayal of public trust for private ends. Although many of these novels were written in the resurgent school of Realism, all of them, in their depiction of pervasive corruption, were capable of being political instruments through the nature of the material which they treated if not through their author’s intent. Whether the writer declaims through his hero against public robbery or simply tries to present dispassionately what he sees, the revulsion of the reader at the travesty of American political ideals is likely to be the same.

There was one notable exception to this trend. It was Jack London’s _The Iron Heel_ (1908). Projecting his story into the future, he wrote of an America under the dictatorship of an Oligarchy serving the interests of the large corporate and industrial groups. The reader learns that the Oligarchy was eventually overthrown, but the book concentrates upon a fictitious era of horrors unequalled until the appearance of Orwell’s _1984_ forty years later. In his introduction to the novel, Anatole France called London a Revolutionary Socialist. This he was, and--in the novel, at least--a devoted Marxist as well. The book was clearly meant to be a political instrument. Its fulfillment of this aim may be judged by a comment of Stephen Spender in his contribution to _The God That Failed_ (1950). He remarks that Harry Pollitt, a high official of the English Communist Party, had told him that in his opinion _The Iron Heel_ was “the best revolutionary novel.” The Communist view of the propaganda value of literature makes the comment significant.

=Upton Sinclair: Corruption Plus Radicalism.= Upton Sinclair’s books were among those which marked the beginning of a transitional phase in the American political novel. In them a new theme was added to that of political corruption: the rise of leftist and radical forces. _Oil!_ (1926) focuses on Bunny Ross’s political journey to the far Left. Bunny’s father, J. Arnold Ross, is one of the tycoons who selects, pays for, and elects an American president. Naming names and placing places, Sinclair sends his characters into the campaign of 1920. Verne Roscoe says that he is negotiating with Barney Brockway of “the Ohio gang.” Sinclair writes that “he made exactly the right offers, and paid his certified checks to exactly the right men,” and Warren Harding was nominated. The fifty million dollars poured into the campaign by the oil interests (according to Sinclair) helped to finish the job. The account of the naval reserve oil lease scandals which follows makes Sinclair’s position on the activities of a powerful lobby very clear. More an exposé than a work of art, the novel describes attempts to hinder the organization of the oil workers and the strikes and strike-breaking which follow. The book ends with an attack upon

an evil power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men
and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of
unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor.